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What about the ramifications of deicide? If the GM is running a game where the players on plane hopping adding to list of slain deities, what happens when all the gods are dead? Granted it wouldn't be easy topull of such a feat, but it should at least get mentions somewhere.
Well, there are 4-5 possibly proto-gods by the deity's cooling corpse that could take over.
Or one of the deity's exarchs could seize/inherit their portfolio/Word/what have you. Heck, they may have even helped nudge their boss along as part of that epic quest.
Brad
__________________ "Your taste buds can't repel flavor of this magnitude!"
I believe the best written D&D supplement of all time is 'The Book of the Righteous', published by Green Ronin, and written by Aaron Loeb. That's the only 'dieties and demigods' book that has ever given me enough to run a pantheon 'out of the box'.
So, for those of you familiar with the work, that should give you a good idea how far away I am from the ideology apparant in 4e.
Fundamentally, I'm not opposed to the notion of god-slaying, but if gods were so easily slain that all it took was a few epic quests and five or so epic mortals, then long long long ago all the gods with their greater knowledge, power, and resources would have managed to kill each other off. If the PC's could manage to arrange to kill Tiamat, then surely Bahamat or one of her other divine foes could have managed it centuries before they were born.
There are dead gods, right? So presumably, this actually happened before.
It is trivially easy for humans to kill each other. Yet they rarely do so. It happens, but these people are usually punished by the society, unless the entire society supported the murder.
And that's probably the same for gods. Maybe Bahamut could try to kill Tiamat - or the other way around. But Bahamut - he would be setting a bad example and might fear the repercussions. Tiamat knows that Bahamut has allies that might come kill him. So they arrange with each other, and to solve their conflicts on the material world, among followers and angels.
But there is another problem - if gods actually first have to complete some kind of quest to commit a murder among each other, this is a lot of prepwork. If the only way to kill a human was to first travel half the world and buy a bazooka, how many murders would still happen? How many could hope to go unnoticed? Even if you "hire" someone else to do it - how likely is it he gets stopped?
How many epic heroes fail their quests? How many epic heroes even exist?
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The first describes the deity's special rules. There's a few nifty things like not being able to be attacked by anyone not in the epic tier, being able to do a savings throw against any effect immediately, and then the bit about "Discorporation"...
This leads to the second column, called "Destroying Tiamat". It contains 3 hooks for quests that once completed, allow you to truely destroy her...
Discuss!
Sounds like they've got it exactly right.
For those groups that don't want gods to be killable, they can either simply not use the rules or make the quests impossible (or, you know, just don't have quests to kill gods). For the groups that do want those rules, they're there. What's more, it looks like the stat-blocks are now not so massive as to make "Deities & Demigods" (or its 4e equivalent) almost completely useless.
Fundamentally, I'm not opposed to the notion of god-slaying, but if gods were so easily slain that all it took was a few epic quests and five or so epic mortals, then long long long ago all the gods with their greater knowledge, power, and resources would have managed to kill each other off. If the PC's could manage to arrange to kill Tiamat, then surely Bahamat or one of her other divine foes could have managed it centuries before they were born.
Heh, this made me laugh a bit. All it takes is a few epic quests and five or so epic heroes . . . 'cause you just can't swing a dead cat without hitting epic heroes in most fantasy settings . . .
Epic heroes taking epic quests are not common occurences. They happen every couple of millenia or so . . . it just so happens that the current epic heroes out to slay Tiamat permanently are the player characters!
And as another poster pointed out, just because you have the physical or magical power to kill someone, doesn't mean you will or it's simply "that easy". All I need is a knife to kill a person (in fact, I don't really even need that). But yet, I never have (even though I do think there are people out there who probably deserve it). And it probably wouldn't be as easy as walking up to them and just hacking away. And if I did pull it off, there would be repercussions. It's not any different at the divine level. Bahamut might think offing Tiamat sounds like a great idea, and he certainly could take on those crazy epic quests himself and then take on Tiamat personally . . . but would it really be just "that easy" for him? Only if the DM is a poor storyteller . . .
__________________ Brian Zuber
Proud Member of ENWorld since 2000 (under several lost screen names). Gaming since the mid-80s!
Favorite Settings: Love all of the official settings, Mystara is my nostalgia fave! Trying to create a homebrew that blends the best elements of the various settings. Favorite Edition: Can't decide between 3rd Edition and 4th Edition, like them both!
Again, if you don't want players killing gods, it seems to me that you just don't allow the game to advance beyond level 20... just like in 2e.
People did read about the heroic, paragon, and epic tiers right? It seems half the complaints about 4e not fitting their preferred play style or type of campaign world on enworld could be resolved by ending the campaign earlier.
Reminds me of the Dragonlace Legends series where Raistlin has to do a bunch of stuff (Including gettin it on with a good cleric woohoo!) in his quest to take on Tahkisis...
Reminds me of the Dragonlace Legends series where Raistlin has to do a bunch of stuff (Including gettin it on with a good cleric woohoo!) in his quest to take on Tahkisis...
First of all, Raistlin's not exactly a good example of a player character. Caramon, on the other hand, is a perfect example.
Secondly, I'm OK with Tiamat being an antagonist that epic characters can kill if they're lucky, but if anybody starts equating her with Takhisis I'm going to scream. One's a big five headed super-dragon, the other's a greater god who happens to take the form of a big five headed super-dragon when she's slumming in the Temple of Neraka.
First of all, Raistlin's not exactly a good example of a player character. Caramon, on the other hand, is a perfect example.
Secondly, I'm OK with Tiamat being an antagonist that epic characters can kill if they're lucky, but if anybody starts equating her with Takhisis I'm going to scream. One's a big five headed super-dragon, the other's a greater god who happens to take the form of a big five headed super-dragon when she's slumming in the Temple of Neraka.
Cheers,
Cam
You say Tomato, I say greater god who happens to take the form of a big five headed super-dragon when she's slumming in the Temple of Neraka.
Seriously though... in the art of Dragonlance book there's this picture of raistlin all tied up in the abyss while Tahkisis watches over him... She's pretty dang hot in that 80s pornqueen look Elmore does so well!
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is where Scales of War is headed. Call me crazy, but I haven't seen mentioned anywhere on these boards the potential Bahamut cameo in Lost Mines of Karak...
Seriously though... in the art of Dragonlance book there's this picture of raistlin all tied up in the abyss while Tahkisis watches over him... She's pretty dang hot in that 80s pornqueen look Elmore does so well!
*nitpick* That's not by Elmore. It's by Clyde Caldwell.
__________________ Formerly known as Sorcica - but my ego was too big for one name only.
All of the above is of course in my opinion only. But do consider that I'm often right.
Last edited by Matrix Sorcica; 20th November 2008 at 09:10 PM..
There are dead gods, right? So presumably, this actually happened before.
It is trivially easy for humans to kill each other. Yet they rarely do so. It happens, but these people are usually punished by the society, unless the entire society supported the murder.
And that's probably the same for gods. Maybe Bahamut could try to kill Tiamat - or the other way around. But Bahamut - he would be setting a bad example and might fear the repercussions. Tiamat knows that Bahamut has allies that might come kill him. So they arrange with each other, and to solve their conflicts on the material world, among followers and angels.
But there is another problem - if gods actually first have to complete some kind of quest to commit a murder among each other, this is a lot of prepwork. If the only way to kill a human was to first travel half the world and buy a bazooka, how many murders would still happen? How many could hope to go unnoticed? Even if you "hire" someone else to do it - how likely is it he gets stopped?
How many epic heroes fail their quests? How many epic heroes even exist?
There are dead gods, right? So presumably, this actually happened before.
It is trivially easy for humans to kill each other. Yet they rarely do so. It happens, but these people are usually punished by the society, unless the entire society supported the murder.
And that's probably the same for gods. Maybe Bahamut could try to kill Tiamat - or the other way around. But Bahamut - he would be setting a bad example and might fear the repercussions. Tiamat knows that Bahamut has allies that might come kill him. So they arrange with each other, and to solve their conflicts on the material world, among followers and angels.
But there is another problem - if gods actually first have to complete some kind of quest to commit a murder among each other, this is a lot of prepwork. If the only way to kill a human was to first travel half the world and buy a bazooka, how many murders would still happen? How many could hope to go unnoticed? Even if you "hire" someone else to do it - how likely is it he gets stopped?
How many epic heroes fail their quests? How many epic heroes even exist?
Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorhook
^ I'm with this guy. He's got it right.
This.
The God/s choosing and guiding a hero or group of heroes to kill another God/ other Gods is a fairly well established trope. Infact you can almost design a campaign around it
In my case it is a demon prince going after godhood.
Yeah... Just because a god CAN do something doesn't mean it's automatic... I mean I see them kind of like kings... Yeah the king could get up, walk to the next kingdom over challange another king to a fight, kill him and take his stuff...
But that's a pain in the thronepillow...
Much easier just to get your followers to do all that stuff for you, while you sit and reap the rewards.
Secondly, I'm OK with Tiamat being an antagonist that epic characters can kill if they're lucky, but if anybody starts equating her with Takhisis I'm going to scream. One's a big five headed super-dragon, the other's a greater god who happens to take the form of a big five headed super-dragon when she's slumming in the Temple of Neraka.
Yeah! Takhisis should only be killed by a single blow by a spear wielding adolescent elf!
Out of curiosity, what was the grounds for saying that deity X is fightable versus deity Y not being fightable?
Our main concern is, "Who will people want to fight, who will make the most compelling battles, and who will best fit in books we're doing."
Tiamat's an easy one. If you like fighting dragons, here's the mother (in more ways than one). She's got five heads for five times the combat prowess. We're doing Draconomicon all about chromatics, and she's all sorts of chromatic.
We'll probably be avoiding good an lawful good deities, just because it's less likely you'll fight them. Who really wants to put Pelor in his place in their game? Seems awfully boring. Now who wants to fight Bane or Tiamat or Torog? Those are more in the "big D&D monster who wants to kill you" mode. We might put out stats for non-evil, non-chaotic evil gods in books they really fit in, like Corellon in a book about the Feywild or the Raven Queen in a book about the Shadowfell or whatever, but it's still less likely.
There aren't many deities who are just too tough to take on. Especially with the evil/CE deities, we wanted ones that looked like you might be able to take them down.
__________________ Logan Bonner
Designer, Dungeons & Dragons
Wizards of the Coast
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